Rudyard Kipling | Poeticous Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature. He was born in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old. Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book (a collection of stories which includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"), Just So Stories (1902) (1894), Kim (1901) (a tale of adventure), many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888); and his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), The White Man's Burden (1899) and If— (1910).

He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story"; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works are said to exhibit "a versatile and luminous narrative gift". Kipling was one of the most popular writers in England, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known." In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and to date he remains its youngest recipient. Among other honours, he was sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, all of which he declined. Kipling's subsequent reputation has changed according to the political and social climate of the age and the resulting contrasting views about him continued for much of the 20th century. George Orwell called him a "prophet of British imperialism".

Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote: "He [Kipling] is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled. But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with." Childhood and early life Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay, in British India to Alice Kipling (née MacDonald) and (John) Lockwood Kipling. Alice (one of four remarkable Victorian sisters) was a vivacious woman about whom a future Viceroy of India would say, "Dullness and Mrs. Kipling cannot exist in the same room." Lockwood Kipling, a sculptor and pottery designer, was the Principal and Professor of Architectural Sculpture at the newly founded Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art and Industry in Bombay. John and Alice had met in 1863 and courted at Rudyard Lake in Rudyard, Staffordshire, England.

They married, and moved to India in 1865. They had been so moved by the beauty of the Rudyard Lake area that when their first child was born, they included a reference to the lake in naming him. Alice's sister Georgiana was married to painter Edward Burne-Jones, and her sister Agnes was married to painter Edward Poynter. Kipling's most famous relative was his first cousin, Stanley Baldwin, who was Conservative Prime Minister of the UK three times in the 1920s and 1930s. Kipling's birth home still stands on the campus of the J J School of Art in Mumbai and for many years was used as the Dean's residence. Mumbai historian Foy Nissen points out, however, that although the cottage bears a plaque stating that this is the site where Kipling was born, the original cottage was torn down decades ago and a new one was built in its place. The wooden bungalow has been empty and locked up for years. Of Bombay, Kipling was to write: Mother of Cities to me, For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait.

According to Bernice M. Murphy, "Kipling’s parents considered themselves 'Anglo-Indians' (a term used in the 19th century for people of British origin living in India) and so too would their son, though he spent the bulk of his life elsewhere. Complex issues of identity and national allegiance would become prominent features in his fiction." Kipling referred to such conflicts; for example: "In the afternoon heats before we took our sleep, she (the Portuguese ayah, or nanny) or Meeta (the Hindu bearer, or male attendant) would tell us stories and Indian nursery songs all unforgotten, and we were sent into the dining-room after we had been dressed, with the caution 'Speak English now to Papa and Mamma.' So one spoke 'English', haltingly translated out of the vernacular idiom that one thought and dreamed in". Kipling's days of "strong light and darkness" in Bombay ended when he was five years old.

As was the custom in British India, he and his three-year-old sister, Alice ("Trix"), were taken to England—in their case to Southsea (Portsmouth), to live with a couple who boarded children of British nationals who were serving in India. The two children lived with the couple, Captain and Mrs. Holloway, at their house, Lorne Lodge, for the next six years. In his autobiography, published some 65 years later, Kipling recalled the stay with horror, and wondered ironically if the combination of cruelty and neglect which he experienced there at the hands of Mrs. Holloway might not have hastened the onset of his literary life: "If you cross-examine a child of seven or eight on his day’s doings (specially when he wants to go to sleep) he will contradict himself very satisfactorily. If each contradiction be set down as a lie and retailed at breakfast, life is not easy. I have known a certain amount of bullying, but this was calculated torture — religious as well as scientific. Yet it made me give attention to the lies I soon found it necessary to tell: and this, I presume, is the foundation of literary effort".

Trix fared better at Lorne Lodge; Mrs. Holloway apparently hoped that Trix would eventually marry the Holloway son. The two Kipling children, however, did have relatives in England whom they could visit. They spent a month each Christmas with their maternal aunt Georgiana ("Georgy"), and her husband at their house, "The Grange" in Fulham, London, which Kipling was to call "a paradise which I verily believe saved me." In the spring of 1877, Alice returned from India and removed the children from Lorne Lodge. Kipling remembers, "Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told any one how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established. Also, badly-treated children have a clear notion of what they are likely to get if they betray the secrets of a prison-house before they are clear of it". In January 1878 Kipling was admitted to the United Services College, at Westward Ho!, Devon, a school founded a few years earlier to prepare boys for the British Army.

The school proved rough going for him at first, but later led to firm friendships, and provided the setting for his schoolboy stories Stalky & Co. (1899). During his time there, Kipling also met and fell in love with Florence Garrard, who was boarding with Trix at Southsea (to which Trix had returned). Florence was to become the model for Maisie in Kipling's first novel, The Light that Failed (1891). Near the end of his stay at the school, it was decided that he lacked the academic ability to get into Oxford University on a scholarship and his parents lacked the wherewithal to finance him, so Lockwood obtained a job for his son in Lahore, Punjab (now in Pakistan), where Lockwood was now Principal of the Mayo College of Art and Curator of the Lahore Museum. Kipling was to be assistant editor of a small local newspaper, the Civil & Military Gazette. He sailed for India on 20 September 1882 and arrived in Bombay on 18 October.

He described this moment years later: "So, at sixteen years and nine months, but looking four or five years older, and adorned with real whiskers which the scandalised Mother abolished within one hour of beholding, I found myself at Bombay where I was born, moving among sights and smells that made me deliver in the vernacular sentences whose meaning I knew not. Other Indian-born boys have told me how the same thing happened to them." This arrival changed Kipling, as he explains, "There were yet three or four days’ rail to Lahore, where my people lived. After these, my English years fell away, nor ever, I think, came back in full strength". Early travels The Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, the newspaper which Kipling was to call "mistress and most true love," appeared six days a week throughout the year except for a one-day break each for Christmas and Easter. Kipling was worked hard by editor Stephen Wheeler, but Kipling's need to write was unstoppable. In 1886 he published his first collection of verse, Departmental Ditties.

That year also brought a change of editors at the newspaper; Kay Robinson, the new editor, allowed more creative freedom and Kipling was asked to contribute short stories to the newspaper. During the summer of 1883, Kipling visited Shimla (then known as Simla), a well-known hill station and summer capital of British India. By then it was established practice for the Viceroy of India and the government to move to Simla for six months and the town became a "centre of power as well as pleasure". Kipling's family became yearly visitors to Simla and Lockwood Kipling was asked to serve in the Christ Church there. Rudyard Kipling returned to Simla for his annual leave each year from 1885 to 1888, and the town figured prominently in many of the stories that he wrote for the Gazette. He describes this time: "My month’s leave at Simla, or whatever Hill Station my people went to, was pure joy—every golden hour counted. It began in heat and discomfort, by rail and road.

It ended in the cool evening, with a wood fire in one’s bedroom, and next morn—thirty more of them ahead!—the early cup of tea, the Mother who brought it in, and the long talks of us all together again. One had leisure to work, too, at whatever play-work was in one’s head, and that was usually full." Back in Lahore, some thirty-nine stories appeared in the Gazette between November 1886 and June 1887. Most of these stories were included in Plain Tales from the Hills, Kipling's first prose collection, which was published in Calcutta in January 1888, a month after his 22nd birthday. Kipling's time in Lahore, however, had come to an end. In November 1887 he was transferred to the Gazette's much larger sister newspaper, The Pioneer, in Allahabad in the United Provinces.

Kipling's writing continued at a frenetic pace; in 1888 he published six collections of short stories: Soldiers Three, The Story of the Gadsbys, In Black and White, Under the Deodars, The Phantom Rickshaw, and Wee Willie Winkie, containing a total of 41 stories, some quite long. In addition, as The Pioneer's special correspondent in western region of Rajputana, he wrote many sketches that were later collected in Letters of Marque and published in From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel. Kipling was discharged from The Pioneer in early 1889, after a dispute. By this time he had been increasingly thinking about the future. He sold the rights to his six volumes of stories for £200 and a small royalty, and the Plain Tales for £50; in addition, from The Pioneer, he received six-months' salary in lieu of notice. He decided to use this money to make his way to London, the centre of the literary universe in the British Empire.

On 9 March 1889, Kipling left India, travelling first to San Francisco via Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. He then travelled through the United States, writing articles for The Pioneer that were later published in From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel. Starting his American travels in San Francisco, Kipling journeyed north to Portland, Oregon; to Seattle, Washington; up into Canada, to Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia; back into the U.S. to Yellowstone National Park; down to Salt Lake City; then east to Omaha, Nebraska, and on to Chicago, Illinois; then to Beaver, Pennsylvania on the Ohio River to visit the Hill family; from there he went to Chautauqua with Professor Hill, and later to Niagara Falls, Toronto, Washington, D.C., New York and Boston. In the course of this journey he met Mark Twain in Elmira, New York, and was deeply impressed. He then crossed the Atlantic, and reached Liverpool in October 1889. He soon made his début in the London literary world to great acclaim. Career as a writer London In London Kipling had several stories accepted by various magazine editors.

He also found a place to live for the next two years: Meantime, I had found me quarters in Villiers Street, Strand, which forty-six years ago was primitive and passionate in its habits and population. My rooms were small, not over-clean or well-kept, but from my desk I could look out of my window through the fanlight of Gatti’s Music-Hall entrance, across the street, almost on to its stage. The Charing Cross trains rumbled through my dreams on one side, the boom of the Strand on the other, while, before my windows, Father Thames under the Shot Tower walked up and down with his traffic. In the next two years he published a novel, The Light that Failed, had a nervous breakdown, and met an American writer and publishing agent, Wolcott Balestier, with whom he collaborated on a novel, The Naulahka (a title which he uncharacteristically misspelt; see below). In 1891, on the advice of his doctors, Kipling embarked on another sea voyage visiting South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and once again India.

However, he cut short his plans for spending Christmas with his family in India when he heard of Balestier's sudden death from typhoid fever, and immediately decided to return to London. Before his return, he had used the telegram to propose to and be accepted by Wolcott's sister Caroline Starr Balestier (1862–1939), called “Carrie”, whom he had met a year earlier, and with whom he had apparently been having an intermittent romance. Meanwhile, late in 1891, his collection of short stories of the British in India, Life's Handicap, was published in London. On 18 January 1892, Carrie Balestier (aged 29) and Rudyard Kipling (aged 26) were married in London, in the "thick of an influenza epidemic, when the undertakers had run out of black horses and the dead had to be content with brown ones." The wedding was held at All Souls Church, Langham Place. Henry James gave the bride away.

United States The couple settled upon a honeymoon that would take them first to the United States (including a stop at the Balestier family estate near Brattleboro, Vermont) and then on to Japan. However, when they arrived in Yokohama, Japan, they discovered that their bank, The New Oriental Banking Corporation, had failed. Taking this loss in their stride, they returned to the U.S., back to Vermont—Carrie by this time was pregnant with their first child—and rented a small cottage on a farm near Brattleboro for ten dollars a month. According to Kipling, "We furnished it with a simplicity that fore-ran the hire-purchase system. We bought, second or third hand, a huge, hot-air stove which we installed in the cellar. We cut generous holes in our thin floors for its eight-inch [20 cm] tin pipes (why we were not burned in our beds each week of the winter I never can understand) and we were extraordinarily and self-centredly content." In this house, which they called Bliss Cottage, their first child, Josephine, was born "in three foot of snow on the night of 29 December 1892.

Her Mother’s birthday being the 31st and mine the 30th of the same month, we congratulated her on her sense of the fitness of things ..." It was also in this cottage that the first dawnings of the Jungle Books came to Kipling: " ... workroom in the Bliss Cottage was seven feet by eight, and from December to April the snow lay level with its window-sill. It chanced that I had written a tale about Indian Forestry work which included a boy who had been brought up by wolves. In the stillness, and suspense, of the winter of ’92 some memory of the Masonic Lions of my childhood’s magazine, and a phrase in Haggard’s Nada the Lily, combined with the echo of this tale. After blocking out the main idea in my head, the pen took charge, and I watched it begin to write stories about Mowgli and animals, which later grew into the two Jungle Books ".

With Josephine's arrival, Bliss Cottage was felt to be congested, so eventually the couple bought land—10 acres (40,000 m2) on a rocky hillside overlooking the Connecticut River—from Carrie's brother Beatty Balestier, and built their own house. Kipling named the house "Naulakha" in honour of Wolcott and of their collaboration, and this time the name was spelled correctly. From his early years in Lahore (1882–87), Kipling had become enthused by the Mughal architecture, especially the Naulakha pavilion situated in Lahore Fort, which eventually became an inspiration for the title of his novel as well as the house. The house still stands on Kipling Road, three miles (5 km) north of Brattleboro in Dummerston, Vermont: a big, secluded, dark-green house, with shingled roof and sides, which Kipling called his "ship", and which brought him "sunshine and a mind at ease." His seclusion in Vermont, combined with his healthy "sane clean life", made Kipling both inventive and prolific.

In the short span of four years, he produced, in addition to the Jungle Books, a collection of short stories (The Day's Work), a novel (Captains Courageous), and a profusion of poetry, including the volume The Seven Seas. The collection of Barrack-Room Ballads, first published individually for the most part in 1890, which contains his poems "Mandalay" and "Gunga Din" was issued in March 1892. He especially enjoyed writing the Jungle Books—both masterpieces of imaginative writing—and enjoyed, too, corresponding with the many children who wrote to him about them. The writing life in Naulakha was occasionally interrupted by visitors, including his father, who visited soon after his retirement in 1893, and British author Arthur Conan Doyle, who brought his golf-clubs, stayed for two days, and gave Kipling an extended golf lesson. Kipling seemed to take to golf, occasionally practising with the local Congregational minister, and even playing with red-painted balls when the ground was covered in snow.

However, wintertime golf was "not altogether a success because there were no limits to a drive; the ball might skid two miles (3 km) down the long slope to Connecticut river." From all accounts, Kipling loved the outdoors, not least of whose marvels in Vermont was the turning of the leaves each fall. He described this moment in a letter: "A little maple began it, flaming blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a pine-belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp where the sumacs grow. Three days later, the hill-sides as fast as the eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold. Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, till nothing remained but pencil-shadings of bare boughs, and one could see into the most private heart of the woods." In February 1896 Elsie Kipling, the couple's second daughter, was born.

By this time, according to several biographers, their marital relationship was no longer light-hearted and spontaneous. Although they would always remain loyal to each other, they seemed now to have fallen into set roles. In a letter to a friend who had become engaged around this time, the 30 year old Kipling offered this sombre counsel: marriage principally taught "the tougher virtues—such as humility, restraint, order, and forethought." The Kiplings loved life in Vermont and might have lived out their lives there, were it not for two incidents—one of global politics, the other of family discord—that hastily ended their time there. By the early 1890s the United Kingdom and Venezuela were in a border dispute involving British Guiana. The U.S. had made several offers to arbitrate, but in 1895 the new American Secretary of State Richard Olney upped the ante by arguing for the American "right" to arbitrate on grounds of sovereignty on the continent (see the Olney interpretation as an extension of the Monroe Doctrine). This raised hackles in the UK and the situation grew into a major Anglo-American crisis, with talk of war on both sides.

Although the crisis led to greater U.S.-British cooperation, at the time Kipling was bewildered by what he felt was persistent anti-British sentiment in the U.S., especially in the press. He wrote in a letter that it felt like being "aimed at with a decanter across a friendly dinner table." By January 1896 he had decided to end his family's "good wholesome life" in the U.S. and seek their fortunes elsewhere. A family dispute became the final straw. For some time, relations between Carrie and her brother Beatty Balestier had been strained owing to his drinking and insolvency. In May 1896 an inebriated Beatty encountered Kipling on the street and threatened him with physical harm. The incident led to Beatty's eventual arrest, but in the subsequent hearing, and the resulting publicity, Kipling's privacy was destroyed, and he was left feeling miserable and exhausted. In July 1896, a week before the hearing was to resume, the Kiplings hurriedly packed their belongings and left the United States.

Devon By September 1896 the Kiplings were in Torquay on the coast of Devon, in a hillside home overlooking the sea. Although Kipling did not much care for his new house, whose design, he claimed, left its occupants feeling dispirited and gloomy, he managed to remain productive and socially active. Kipling was now a famous man, and in the previous two or three years, had increasingly been making political pronouncements in his writings. The Kiplings had welcomed their first son, John, in August 1896. Kipling had begun work on two poems, "Recessional" (1897) and "The White Man's Burden" (1899) which were to create controversy when published. Regarded by some as anthems for enlightened and duty-bound empire-building (that captured the mood of the Victorian age), the poems equally were regarded by others as propaganda for brazenfaced imperialism and its attendant racial attitudes; still others saw irony in the poems and warnings of the perils of empire.

Take up the White Man's burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go, bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait, in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught sullen peoples, Plain tales from the hills: Amazon.co.uk: Rudyard, Kipling: Books Plain tales from the hills Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Paperback Â£8.90 Amazon Prime Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Apple To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. or Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . Product details Publisher: Doubleday, Page & Co; Rev.

ed edition (1912) Language: English Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 16.7 x 2.8 cm Average Customer Review: By Oliver Twist on 30 July 2011 Format: Paperback In India there are the Plains and there are the Hills (the Himalayas, I believe). So there is something of a pun carried in the title "Plain Tales from the Hills". You could not wish to find forty more varied and penetrating stories about Anglo/Indian society under the Raj, than these. Kipling was an "insider" and the stories provide a brilliant series of windows into the social life of Simla, the summer capital of the Indian Empire. Besides this, they touch upon a very wide range of subjects, including suicide, (implied) transvestism, opium addiction and infant mortality; love variously lost, found and misplaced; charlatanry, sportsmanship and the supernatural. Kipling was twenty when he began writing them, and twenty-two when they were published in collected form.

They were written in the latter half of the 1880s, when he was working as an assistant editor for the "Civil and Military Gazette" in Lahore, north-western India (now Pakistan). It was this journalistic experience which brought him into daily contact with all sorts and conditions of life in India, and it was in the CMG (a daily newspaper) that these stories were first published, in the form of a series. Together, the "Plain Tales..." make for a stunning collection. The "Oxford World's Classics" edition is especially useful. It carries an excellent Introduction and General Preface by Andrew Rutherford, a chronology of Kipling's life, and good Explanatory Notes for the Indian terms which the reader will encounter in the text. Pearson Prentice Hall: Author Biographies Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) Rudyard Kipling wrote short stories, novels, and poetry for both young people and adults. His writings ranged from stories about British schoolboys, to poems about life as a soldier, to tales of the Indian jungle.

Kipling wrote most of his best-known pieces more than 100 years ago, and many of his works, such as the stories that make up The Jungle Books and his novels Captains Courageous and Kim, are still widely read today. One of his best-known poems, entitled "If—," ("If you can keep your head while others all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you …") continues to inspire many. Kipling was born in Bombay, India, in 1865. At that time, India was ruled by Great Britain and many British people and their families had gone to India as government workers, military personnel, or to fill various other jobs. Kipling's father, for example, worked in an Indian museum and was also an author who wrote about India. When young Rudyard was about six, he was sent back to England and lived for five years in a foster home. These years were not happy, nor were the following ones, during which he attended a boarding school.

At school, he was lonely and bullied by other boys, but when he wrote about English boarding schools in books such as Stalky and Co., he presented life at such schools as important to the development of future citizens of the British Empire. In 1882, Kipling returned to India, where he remained for seven years. He took a job at the British-Indian newspaper, The Civil and Military Gazette, and later wrote for a paper called The Pioneer. He also composed stories and poetry on the side. His newspaper jobs gave him opportunities to travel around the country and to observe many aspects of Indian life, including the influence the British military had on how the land was governed. During his years in England, Kipling had always remained fascinated with the land of his birth, and his writings reflected his keen observations of India. Two of the books he published during this time, a collection of poems called Departmental Ditties and a short-story collection called Plain Tales from the Hills, helped to establish his literary reputation even in England. When Kipling returned there in 1889, he found that he had become a very popular writer.

His 1892 collection of poems, Barrack-Room Ballads, further strengthened his reputation. Dealing with the lives of British soldiers, these poems were written in the down-to-earth dialect that soldiers actually spoke. Kipling moved to the United States with his American wife in 1892. The newlyweds settled in Vermont, where they remained for several years and had three children. It was during this time that Kipling wrote The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book—collections of stories about the Indian boy Mowgli and his friends in the jungle. In 1902, Kipling bought a house in Sussex, in southeast England, which would be his home for the rest of his life. Sussex also provided the background for many of the books that he wrote in his later years. In 1907, Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the most prestigious award a writer can win. He was the first British citizen ever to receive this prize. When Kipling was young, Great Britain, as well as several other European countries, had colonies or possessions in various parts of the world.

Britain, for example, controlled many countries in Africa and ruled Canada and Australia as well. It was said that,"The sun never sets on the British Empire," because British colonies lay in every part of the globe. This strong British influence is one reason that English is spoken in so many countries around the world. Of the countries that made up the British Empire, India was one of the largest and most important. The British had taken almost complete control of the region by the mid-1700s, but they had begun doing business there as early as 1600, when the British East India Company was established and began trading in spices and cotton. By Kipling's time, British officials governed most areas of India, and the Indian army was a mix of British and Indian soldiers. British families that lived in India for more than one generation, as Kipling's did, were fairly common. Individuals might travel back to Britain for short and long stays, but many felt that India was as much their home as Britain. Many British citizens lived all or most of their lives in other countries.

Rudyard Kipling facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Rudyard Kipling Burwash, England English writer and poet The English poet and story writer Rudyard Kipling was one of the first masters of the short story in English, and he was the first to use Cockney dialect (the manner in which natives of London, England's, East End speak) in serious poetry. Early life Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay, India. His father was professor of architectural sculpture at the Bombay School of Art. In 1871 Kipling was sent to England for his education. In 1878 Rudyard entered the United Services College at Westward Ho!, a boarding school in Devon. There young "Gigger," as he was called, endured bullying and harsh discipline, but he also enjoyed the close friendships, practical jokes, and merry pranks he later recorded in Stalky & Co. (1899).

Kipling's closest friend at Westward Ho!, George Beresford, described him as a short, but "cheery, capering, podgy, little fellow" with a thick pair of spectacles over "a broad smile." His eyes were brilliant blue, and over them his heavy black eyebrows moved up and down as he talked. Another close friend was the headmaster, (the principal of a private school) "Crom" Price, who encouraged Kipling's literary ambitions by having him edit the school paper and praising the poems which he wrote for it. When Kipling sent some of these to India, his father had them privately printed as Schoolboy Lyrics (1881), Kipling's first published work. Young journalist In 1882 Kipling rejoined his parents in Lahore , India, where he became a copy editor (one who edits newspaper articles) for the Civil and Military Gazette. In 1887 he moved to the Allahabad Pioneer, a better paper, which gave him greater liberty in his writing.

He published satiric (sharply or bitterly witty) verses, Departmental Ditties in 1886, and over seventy short stories in 1888 in seven paperback volumes. In style, these stories showed the influence of the writers Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Bret Harte (1836–1902), and Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893). The subjects, however, were Kipling's own. He wrote about Anglo-Indian society, which he readily criticized with an acid pen, and the life of the common British soldier and the Indian native, which he portrayed accurately and sympathetically. Fame in England In 1889 Kipling took a long voyage through China , Japan , and the United States . When he reached London, he found that his stories had preceded him and established him as a brilliant new author. He was readily accepted into the circle of leading writers.

While there he wrote a number of stories and some of his best-remembered poems: "A Ballad of East and West," " Mandalay ," and "The English Flag." He also introduced English readers to a "new genre [type]" of serious poems in Cockney dialect: "Danny Deever," "Tommy," "Fuzzy-Wuzzy," and "Gunga Din." Kipling's first novel, The Light That Failed (1891), was unsuccessful. But when his stories were collected as Life's Handicap (1891) and poems as Barrackroom Ballads (1892), Kipling replaced Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) as the most popular English author. The American years In 1892 Kipling married Caroline Balestier. They settled on the Balestier estate near Brattleboro, Vermont , in the United States, and began four of the happiest years of Kipling's life.

During this time he wrote some of his best work—Many Inventions (1893), perhaps his best volume of short stories; The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895), two books of animal fables that attracted readers of all ages by illustrating the larger truths of life; The Seven Seas (1896), a collection of poems in experimental rhythms; and Captains Courageous (1897), a novel-length, sea story. These works not only assured Kipling's lasting fame as a serious writer but also made him a rich man. His imperialism In 1897 the Kiplings settled in Rottingdean, a village on the British coast near Brighton. The outbreak of the Spanish-American War (1898; a short war between Spain and the United States over lands including Cuba and the Philippines ) and the Boer War (1899–1902; a war between Great Britain and South Africa ) turned Kipling's attention to colonial affairs. He began to publish a number of solemn poems in standard English in the London Times.

The most famous of these, "Recessional" (July 17, 1897), issued a warning to Englishmen to regard their accomplishments in the Diamond Jubilee (fiftieth) year of Queen Victoria's (1819–1901) reign with humility and awe rather than pride and arrogance. The equally well-known "White Man's Burden" (February 4, 1899) clearly expressed the attitudes toward the empire that are implied in the stories in The Day's Work (1898) and A Fleet in Being (1898). Kipling referred to less highly developed peoples as "lesser breeds" and considered order, discipline, sacrifice, and humility to be the essential qualities of colonial rulers. These views have been denounced as racist (believing that one race is better than others), elitist (believing oneself to be a part of a superior group), and jingoistic (pertaining to a patriot who speaks in favor of an aggressive and warlike foreign policy). But for Kipling, the term "white man" indicated citizens of the more highly developed nations.

He felt it was their duty to spread law, literacy, and morality throughout the world. During the Boer War, Kipling spent several months in South Africa, where he raised funds for soldiers' relief and worked on an army newspaper, the Friend. In 1901 Kipling published Kim, the last and most charming of his portrayals of Indian life. But anti-imperialist reaction following the end of the Boer War caused a decline in Kipling's popularity. When Kipling published The Five Nations, a book of South African verse, in 1903, he was attacked in parodies (satirical imitations), caricatures (exaggerations for comic effect), and serious protests as the opponent of a growing spirit of peace and democratic equality. Kipling retired to "Bateman's," a house near Burwash, a secluded village in Essex. Later works Kipling now turned from the wide empire as his subject to simply England itself. In 1902 he published Just So Stories for Little Children. He also issued two books of stories of England's past—Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910).

Like the Jungle Books they were intended for young readers but were suitable for adults as well. His most significant work at this time was a number of volumes of short stories written in a different style—"Traffics and Discoveries" (1904), "Actions and Reactions" (1904), "A Diversity of Creatures" (1917), "Debits and Credits" (1926), and "Limits and Renewals" (1932). Kipling's later stories treat more complex, subtle, and somber (serious) subjects. They reflect Kipling's darkened worldview following the death of his daughter, Josephine, in 1899, and the death of his son, John, in 1915. Consequently, these stories have never been as popular as his earlier works. But modern critics, in reevaluating Kipling, have found a greater power and depth that make them among his best work. In 1907 Kipling became the first English writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died on January 18, 1936, and is buried in Westminster Abbey in London, England.

His autobiography, Something of Myself, was published in 1937. Rudyard Kipling's early stories and poems about life in colonial India made him a great favorite with English readers. His support of English imperialism (the policy of extending the rule of a nation over foreign countries) at first contributed to this popularity but caused a reaction against him in the twentieth century. Today he is best known for his Jungle Books and Kim, a Story of India. For More Information Carrington, Charles Edmund. Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Work. London: Macmillan, 1955. Gilmour, David. The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling. New York : Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002. Ricketts, Harry. Rudyard Kipling: A Life. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001. Wilson, Angus. The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Works. New York: Viking Press, 1978. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. MLA

Question: Who wrote a collection of short stories about a gang of schoolboys called Stalky & Co?
Answer: RUDYARD KIPLING